HEALTH CARE: Get out the wheelchairs

My 91-year-old father just returned from a week of fishing at a remote cabin on the Alaskan coast with some dear friends. When he’s not off traveling, he spends 8-plus hours a day working in his 4-acre yard, keeping up his masterpiece flower and vegetable garden/orchard, chopping and stacking wood, and even came to my rescue with his chainsaw when a huge fir tree fell across my driveway last winter.

During a cruise around the Indian Ocean last year, my parents discovered one of the keys to their high quality of active life: access to U.S. medical care. Most of the other guests were from Great Britain — recipients of “National Health Care” and were either in wheelchairs or using canes. Even those who were significantly younger than my parents were not as physically “spry.”

In discussions they were surprised to find that total knee replacements, which both of my parents have had done, thanks Dr. McInnis, are not offered past a certain age under the British system.

So, Americans: Meet your future! If Hillary has her way, and we go to a single payer, socialistic system, it will be paid for by rationing. The rationing will be done by denying procedures primarily based on age.

We all desire to grow old with the ability to enjoy our lives and our families to our full potential. Let’s not allow the brakes of socialism to stop medical progress in it’s tracks! Get back to free market solutions: malpractice reform, interstate insurance competition, tax credits for all medical costs including premium payments, repeal onerous government regulations in medicine, expand help for those truly indigent, etc. Or start investing in wheelchair companies.

DENISE GRAVES

Hayden